A crisis looms over the scientific enterprise. Not a day passes without news of retractions, failed replications, fraudulent peer reviews, or misinformed science-based policies. The social implications are enormous, yet this crisis has remained largely uncharted-until now. In Science on the Verge, luminaries in the field of post-normal science and scientific governance focus attention on worrying fault-lines in the use of science for policymaking, and the dramatic crisis within science itself. This provocative new volume in The Rightful Place of Science (...) also explores the concepts that need to be unlearned, and the skills that must be relearned and enhanced, if we are to restore the legitimacy and integrity of science. (shrink)

The problem of assessing the sustainability of human development is discussed in theoretical and practical terms.In Part I, two theoretical tools for describing the challenge of assessing sustainable development are introduced and briefly discussed: (i) the use of an energetic model to describe the dynamic interaction between the human and the biophysical compartment; (ii) basic concepts derived from the hierarchy theory applied to the development of human society. Sustainable and ethical development of human society requires the consideration of three hierarchical (...) levels: the biosphere, the societal and the individual level. Such a holistic assessment can be obtained by integrating scientific and ethical considerations. (shrink)